


Three mad kings

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Blackout verse, F/M, Multi, angst angst angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 05:57:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5528624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie is kind of thankful her mother hadn’t stuck around to see just how twisted things would get. Now you’re just one more voice in my head, she thinks, and the only family I’ve got left is hunting me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three mad kings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hayj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hayj/gifts).



> This is my response to The Twelve Days of Revels first Blackout Verse prompt, "She is a Liar." For hayj for being the other half of so much I do. (And it's not just our OT3 love.)

The woman who was once Charlie Matheson stumbles out of a bar in a town on the frozen northern fringe on the edge of what used to be Monroe’s Republic. She stomps through the ugly drifts of dirty snow, and wonders, not for the first time, whether the fallout from the bombs really did stop south of here, the way the locals claim. She remembers snow as something white and pure, not this grey slurry that makes the place – and the day – even more depressing.

_Why are you depressed, Charlotte? Could it be you miss me? Miss us?_

Christmas is for family, her father’s low rumble reminds her, and her mother sighs, exasperated. _Dysfunction aside, we are your family, Charlie. Don’t be like this._

There’s nothing for it, she retorts sharply. You decided, Mom. You did this to me. Maybe you tried to rescue me, too, but by then, the damage was done.

She winces at the memory of her mother’s fury when things began to change, the litany of insults she’d been able to dismiss as without basis, and then, the ones she couldn’t: “They were dictators” and “you haven’t even seen the monster he can be.” Then came “your brother died fighting that regime!” and finally, the bitter proclamation that left her gaping at her mother’s wilful ignorance: “Miles is a good man, but Monroe perverted him.”

Charlie is kind of thankful her mother hadn’t stuck around to see just how twisted things would get. Now you’re just one more voice in my head, she thinks, and the only family I’ve got left is hunting me.

Haunting me.

_It’s doesn’t have to be this way, kid. We want you with us._

She believes it, her bruised, wounded heart fluttering to life at the thought. Miles and Monroe. The President and the General once more. Their M flying over Chicago, and Austin, and Willoughby alike, the scarred flesh on her forearm throbbing as if to remind her.

“How can you, Miles?” Charlie had pleaded, desperate for him to reveal a plan that could make her stay. Rachel was already packing the horses, dry-eyed after weeks of shouting and crying, and she couldn’t look at Monroe, lest she catch of glimpse of the twisted, tangled emotions that stalked the space between them.

Miles, though. Him she knew how to handle. “After everything we did? Did you forget?” she had hissed, shoving her forearm under his nose, the twisted flesh a bitter accusation.

His fingers were gentle on her skin, almost as intoxicating as Monroe’s lips had been. “Didn’t I tell you the story? It’s an M for Matheson, too,” her uncle had said quietly, the shame in his eyes crucifying her. “I let you think it was his mark, but I had one too. I just never let you see it.”

Their eyes had met then, and her heart had stopped at the invitation in the black-brown depths. They’d skipped and slid and careeneed around the edges of it for so long that there was no room for doubt. Too many nights of hearing him in the dark, hand slap-slapping on his cock as Bass licked and sucked and teased her until she was too far gone to care about being quiet.   He’d held her gaze relentlessly that first day he’d pushed Monroe to his knees and slid free the buttons on his pants.

“Charlie,” her lover had begged, the want in his eyes scorching her soul. “Do it,” she had rasped, astonished by just how badly she needed to see it, terrified by the understanding building somewhere in the back of her mind.

This. It had always been about this. Miles and Bass, her and Bass.

_M for Matheson, M for Monroe. You knew, Charlie. You always knew._

“No!” she shouts, kicking at the pile of slush so wildly she loses her footing and ends up on her ass. “I couldn’t! I didn’t, not really.”

Couldn’t conceive of what it would be like, two sets of hands and two wicked tongues and two knowing smiles taking her apart. Leaving her mindless, helpless, drunk on bliss. Two weeks, the happiest she’s ever been, soaked in pleasure and drenched in lust.

_We’ll run it together. Do it right, this time. Everything together._

His grin had stretched from one side of her world to the other, his curls soft under her fingers as she rode him, nodding along to his promises, wanting to believe, wanting, wanting …

_You saved us, Charlie. You’ll keep us straight. We’re better with you._

But sanity vanished with the teasing slick of her uncle’s tongue. Morality was suspended. She couldn’t think, so how could she ride herd on her two mad kings? Couldn’t tell right from wrong – couldn’t care! - let alone bear this power and wield it fairly.

She could have had a throne, if she’d stayed. Could have been a queen.

_A king! Three mad kings together._

It had been the last thing the world had needed. And she’s not ready to give up the fight.

She didn’t ask to be hunted, Charlie thinks viciously. All she said was ‘no’. What’s a little dissent between family, anyway?

The poster is torn and fading, but her face taunts her anyway. Body languid and eyes full of promise. So at odds with that lettering that shouts her duplicity to the world.

She is a liar.

_I don’t want this. I don’t love you._

Lies, lies, lies, she thinks viciously, and stabs her knife right between that girl’s lying eyes.

_fin_


End file.
